Floor Raiser or Ceiling Limiter? Differential Storytelling Outcomes with a Child-Centric GenAI System Across Individual Differences

Min Fan, Wanqing Ma, Xinyue Cui, Xiaolu Dai, Shengyu Huang

Generative AI (GenAI) holds promise for democratizing creative literacy, yet whether it benefits all children equally remains unclear. Using a child-centric GenAI storytelling system for children aged 7-12, we conducted a mixed-methods within-subjects experiment (N = 40, Grades 2-6) comparing GenAI-assisted and traditional storyboard conditions. Three findings emerged. First, the GenAI-assisted condition was associated with a floor-raising convergence pattern, with the quality gap narrowing by 83.5%, driven by lower-end support and upper-end constraint mechanisms. This convergence was dimension-selective, improving creativity and richness while leaving coherence and narrative structure tied to baseline performance. Second, younger children more often selected semantically distant keywords while older children preferred semantically closer ones, although engagement orientation varied across individuals regardless of age. Third, image regeneration was positively associated with structural quality dimensions, though this association was attenuated after baseline control. We propose mechanism-contingent scaffolding as a design principle for adaptive GenAI storytelling systems serving diverse children.